Risk management helps with many psychological issues in trading
Let’s also talk about another so very important, and often undervalued part of risk management. Risk management really does help me to stay emotionally stable during trading. Just think about it: If I place a trade with a 30% risk and I lose it, it will hurt so much, and it will allow my negative sides, my revenge nature to come out and start dominating. I will be stressed, I will not sleep well if this trade will stay overnight. And even if I win, I will be emotionally and mentally tired, I will most likely not be able to continue trading in a normal state of my mind and emotion.
The next thing is not so obvious, but if you have bad and not consistent risk management, you will NOT TRUST YOURSELF. Can you imagine how destructive it is on a subconscious level, how much stress it causes? You start your trading day and deep inside you know you can do many bad things with your account because you know how often you just follow an impulsive behavior, and how often you revenge trade. You know it can be so bad you can actually blow your account in 1 day, as it happened before. Even if you made a self promise to trade according to your plan.
And on the contrary, what happens if I regularly, consistently risk 0.25-1% of an account. Many GOOD things will happen, both obvious and not so obvious. First of all, after entering a trade, I will most likely be able to stay relatively calm - I know if I lose, I’ll lose only 0.25-1%. I know I can trust myself and I will not move or remove my stop loss. I'm protected.
It will help me to be pleasantly curious about how my trade will develop. If it goes my way, I will be naturally glad it was good, but I will not fall into euphoria and become over-excited, because I risked only 1% and my gain will be 1-2% only. That's very nice of course, but not too much to bring me to a state of euphoria. If it goes against me, I will allow it to do so and hit my SL. And after it does so, I will then realize that it’s totally fine to lose a trade. I can lose even 10 of them in a row, and I will still have 90% of my account ready to trade the next day, next week, next month, and next year.
I believe good risk management lets you feel you DO control at least something in your trading, you will feel you can allow yourself to be mistaken about the trades you take. That's why I think we should not concentrate on the ways of eliminating overtrading, stress during trading, emotional trading, fear, and so on. Instead, we should focus on good risk management. I will post more about practical ways of improving risk management.
The next thing is not so obvious, but if you have bad and not consistent risk management, you will NOT TRUST YOURSELF. Can you imagine how destructive it is on a subconscious level, how much stress it causes? You start your trading day and deep inside you know you can do many bad things with your account because you know how often you just follow an impulsive behavior, and how often you revenge trade. You know it can be so bad you can actually blow your account in 1 day, as it happened before. Even if you made a self promise to trade according to your plan.
And on the contrary, what happens if I regularly, consistently risk 0.25-1% of an account. Many GOOD things will happen, both obvious and not so obvious. First of all, after entering a trade, I will most likely be able to stay relatively calm - I know if I lose, I’ll lose only 0.25-1%. I know I can trust myself and I will not move or remove my stop loss. I'm protected.
It will help me to be pleasantly curious about how my trade will develop. If it goes my way, I will be naturally glad it was good, but I will not fall into euphoria and become over-excited, because I risked only 1% and my gain will be 1-2% only. That's very nice of course, but not too much to bring me to a state of euphoria. If it goes against me, I will allow it to do so and hit my SL. And after it does so, I will then realize that it’s totally fine to lose a trade. I can lose even 10 of them in a row, and I will still have 90% of my account ready to trade the next day, next week, next month, and next year.
I believe good risk management lets you feel you DO control at least something in your trading, you will feel you can allow yourself to be mistaken about the trades you take. That's why I think we should not concentrate on the ways of eliminating overtrading, stress during trading, emotional trading, fear, and so on. Instead, we should focus on good risk management. I will post more about practical ways of improving risk management.
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